Use the image above, or one of your own, as a template. But remove the clothes! The children draw on the clothes and colour them accordingly.

The children cut out and colour in circles of paper. You can call out the colours or they can choose for themselves. Then they follow simple instructions – such as these – for making paper Christmas baubles to decorate a tree.

Then call out the names of the objects, one by one, for each child in turn to put into the stocking. You can call out all the objects or a selection of them.

Why not ask the children, again in turns, to remove the objects afterwards, naming each one as they go.

The children can copy the Christmas card template shown above or design one of their own.

Make sure they include the words Feliz Navidad (Happy Christmas) on the card. Inside, they could write to a member of their family – Mamá (Mum), Papá (Dad), Hermano (Brother) or Hermana (Sister) – and add the words ¡Te quiero! (I love you!).

What snack do the children think Santa would like best? And what would he like to drink?!

They can bring in the snacks they have chosen, or perhaps you can prepare an agreed-upon snack in the school (get the children to agree upon the snack between themselves).

Vocabulary will vary for this one and it’s a good opportunity for the children to use their Spanish dictionaries.

image: gopixpic.com

Keeping its identity secret, choose an object for each child to wrap up as a present for another classmate. Make sure the object’s Spanish name is known by the child you give it to.

Then the children give the presents to each other. The giver can ask the receiver: ¿Qué es? (What is it?). The receiver can reply: Es un / una ____ (It’s a ____).

image: picturesof.net

You can make this activity as long or as short as you like.

Place the angel somewhere in the tree and ask. ¿Dónde está? (Where is she?). She could be Arriba (Up) or Abajo (Down). She could be next to another item in the tree, for example: Está al lado del caramelo (It’s next to the sweet). She could be Above (Encima de), Below (Debajo de) etc.

image: dreamstime.com

Fill a sack like Santa’s with objects and then remove them one by one, naming them as you go.

Alternatively, get the children to pick up each object you name and put it in the sack.

image: benprice01.blogspot.com

See if you can get hold of a hat like Scrooge’s so you and the children can act out his role.

Give Scrooge a sack of presents (objects of your choice) and a ‘trigger’ word, which is the name of one of the objects.

Then hand out to each child slips of paper with one object name written on each slip.

The task is for the children to approach Scrooge and ask for their object. For example, Quiero un caramelo (I want a sweet). Scrooge must keep on saying ¡No! until the trigger word is said by one of the children. That word will be one of the objects written on one of the slips of paper. Once Scrooge has said ¡Sí! then he hands the object to the child and the next child has a turn at being Scrooge. And so on.

image: clker.com

Hide sweets around the class or empty out a big bag of them.

The question the children need to answer from you is ¿Cuántos caramelos hay? (How many sweets are there?).

Naturally, you will need to select a number the children are already familiar with!

image: gopixpic.com

If you’re really in luck there’ll be snow outside!

If not, look for creative ways in which you can build a snowman in class so as to practice these parts of the body: Los brazos (The arms), Las manos (The hands), La nariz (The nose), La boca (The mouth), Los ojos (The eyes).

image: christmassweaters.ca

Ah yes, that classic unwanted Christmas gift!

Copy this sweater template and arrange a number of them on a sheet of paper.

Print off copies for the children.

Then call out what you would like them to draw on each sweater; anything you like, such as nouns you have recently taught, or a set of Christmas vocabulary.

The children can colour in their drawings too of course.

Happy Christmas!

See you next time,

Jim

Jim Porter is a co-founder of Speekee, home of the most comprehensive Spanish learning program for children ever to appear online

Jim began his Spanish learning journey in 1990. He has been a language teacher since 1994 and he lives in sunny southern Spain with his two bilingual children. Loves it! More…